


Scars on Scars

by Anonymous



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s02e08 The Chase
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 22:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11091531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Perhaps if Azula had hurt some one else that day, it would have been the end of only another circle.





	Scars on Scars

If it kills the boy he does not know what he will do.

There have been times he has been glad not to know, times he has tasted the freedom of not knowing. Now he feels only fear.

Fear, when he had first seen the girl. Fear, as the very air sparked and snapped around them. Fear, as he saw the boy fall.

He did not reach for the girl. Did not return the fire. He tore back the boy's shirt and saw that the bolt had mercifully struck the far side of his chest, had missed his heart.

The boy barely breathed but he still lived. There was little he could do but make the boy as comfortable as possible and set his tea to brew. What more was there?

As he sleeps the boy cries. His skin is hot to the touch.

He is no water bender. No healer. He tears a strip of cloth from his sleeve, soaks it in water and puts a corner into the boy's mouth. Even unconscious the boy nurses the cloth--a small gift.

Hours creep by and he occupies himself by cleaning the boy's wound. He dares not use water and knows that a bandage will only slow the healing. He puffs hot air onto his hands to warm them before he touches the boy.

As night falls he bends a flame into his hands and lets it roll over his fingers. He takes the boy's hand, stretches the fingers flat with his own, and allows the flame to fall from his hand to the boy's palm. It flickers weakly and dies.

There is no food and surely no way for the boy to eat. He soaks the cloth in his tea and offers it to the boy, but his thirst is gone.

The boy cannot control his own bowels in this condition. He cleans him as best he can before carrying him to a cleaner pile of straw.

In the glow of the rising moon the boy's head droops to one side, as if he is trying to hide his scar. He places one hand over it, and though it is large his hand covers most of it. The boy looks almost as he did in childhood, but he can feel the rough burned skin, the scar tissue holding his eye so nearly closed, what little is left of the cartilage in his ear. The boy is no more than a child, but he has had no childhood.

At last, as the moon falls lower in the sky, the boy stirs. He asks no questions. He tries to summon his familiar comforting anger. But anger takes an energy the boy does not have in this moment.

He pulls the boy against his shoulder and they both weep for the things they have lost.


End file.
